Cooking and Wellbeing in Sandwell

Members in Sandwell have been keeping their spirits up by cooking together.

For 6 weeks, we’ve been learning how to cook during the lockdown. We used video chat through Houseparty, so that we could see what each other was doing. Some of us were worried about using the oven so we started off with using a microwave.  

Since we started we’ve cooked all sorts of things and we have even moved onto using the oven. Once we had learnt how to stay safe it was fine. Our favourite has been cheese and potato pie.  

One of the people in our network has her meals delivered but she enjoys watching everyone get involved and being part of the fun.  

Every week we make something different. It’s nice that we are all involved in choosing something to make. Marie tells us the list of ingredients that we need at our Wednesday hub so that we can be ready for Friday.  

Wellbeing is so important for the people we support. We know that we must also look after our own wellbeing. Every week we have a Wellbeing Wednesday video call. It’s a space to chat and share how we are feeling. As lockdown intensified, our manager Lucy noticed that we were struggling and upped the wellbeing get togethers to three times a week. We’ve moved back to once a week now but it’s lovely to know that the flexibility that we offer in our support is also offered to us in the team.